We get the lousy $10 bill? Really?
I know there are bigger fish to fry, newswise, but please allow me to divert my attention to something smaller: The U.S. Treasury Department has said the $10 bill will be redesigned, and it will have a woman’s face on it.
Earlier this year, a campaign began to put a woman on the $20 bill and kick Andrew Jackson to the curb. There are wonderful reasons to do this, not the least that by modern standards Jackson was a monster. Although no one’s record is wholly awful, Jackson’s has a particular nastiness to it. He brought about the whole Trail of Tears that force-marched Indian people from their ancestral lands to “Indian Territory.” Thousands died. Jackson also made his money as a slave trader, a nice little filigree to his story.
Alexander Hamilton’s reputation, by contrast, has swung back and forth over the years, but he seems to have settled in as a good, solid Founding Father. He rose from his illegitimate birth in the West Indies to become the first Secretary of the Treasury. Also, he currently is the hottest ticket on Broadway.
Advantage Hamilton, I say.
I understand the practical reasons for Treasury Secretary Jack Lew choosing the $10 to host the first woman on paper money in almost 150 years: It was due for an anti-counterfeit redesign anyway, and the $20 wasn’t. But seriously: When was the last time you had a $10 in your pocket that wasn’t by accident? Owing to the ATM, America, when it doesn’t run on plastic, runs on twenties. (And ones, to tip the valet.) We have become completely used to the ubiquity of the $20 bill. The sawbuck is more visible than the $2, unless you’re selling scrap metal, but not much more so.
Lew says Hamilton may stay on, either as his own run of $10s or on the bill somewhere. Given that he liked women a bit too much, he might prefer the latter.
I am not picky about what woman gets the honor. Harriet Tubman might be nice.
But when the redesign of the $20 rolls round again, let’s see a woman there, too.